Tag: encyclopedia

Wikipedia has long been a staple of the web. A common top search result when your curiosity is tickled. The place you go to begin research on anything. An obligatory donation at year-end when you’re sick of looking at that obtuse plea box.

Information is what makes the web great and, unlike centralized sources of information from the past, its content is generated by anyone who wants to contribute. Wikipedia has been a stand-up example of this user-generated, diversified curation. However, it’s been slow to adapt to the changing times and depends on a disappearing model of monetization.

Enter Everipedia, the champion of creative commons that’s decentralizing every facet of information gathering, including how it supports itself financially. With a social networking feel and a sharing economy empowerment for contributors, Everipedia has quickly become the largest English encyclopedia, by content volume, in the world. Their modernized approach is poised to change the way we search, source, and cite information from the web.

Why?

While Wikipedia is an amazing resource and has continually become more and more reliable, now often being thought of as a reliable, citable source – it’s also a centralized conglomerate that determines what information is published. Though it laid the foundation for spreading information by enlisting it’s users, it also put a politically correct filter on nearly everything that’s published. As a passionate lover of Wikipedia, yearly supporter, and occasional contributor it feels odd to be saying anything negative about my most frequently visited website – but that’s before I understood how much better it could be. That’s before I realized that the site has looked exactly the same for decades (save for larger donation pop-ups).

The truth is, Wikipedia needs competition in order to remain relevant. Everipedia intends to do this and more. Not only competing directly with Wikipedia but subverting their model of information gathering/curating as well as their support system. Everipedia’s founders Sam Kazemian and Theodor Forselius are setting out to encourage a different way forward, a world where those who consume and provide the information share in the value of it. This model intends to bring the money to the surface and make it an integral part of everyday use of the platform, instead of an afterthought.

Print isn’t dead, it’s just a lot different

Everipedia embraces the changes publishing has experienced in recent decades. Look around at the rest of the web – anyone can post anything they want. No doubt the downside is ‘fake news’ but the upside is collective collaboration that forces transparency. Kind of the same way cryptocurrencies and ICO’s are subverting institutions that control who, when, and how people can invest their money.

With a clean, non-technical editing system that allows structural changes along with content and a tokenized system to reward contributors and editors coming soon – Everipedia is ushering a new wave of authority that is completely decentralized. Shucking the negatives of publishing gatekeepers and giving control back to the contributors will revolutionize information gathering, prioritizing, and consumption.

Turns out not everything you read online is true. While this might come as a shock, some people want you to believe their agenda and they are willing to lie to make that a reality. Of course Everipedia has thought about this and is simply applying a collaborative approach to subvert false information. And hopefully you’re thinking blockchain at this point because that’s exactly what the founders thought. Why not leverage blockchain to secure and solidify information with verifications from the community?

“Without context, a piece of information is just a dot. It floats in your brain with a lot of other dots and doesn’t mean a damn thing. Knowledge is information-in-context…connecting the dots.” -Michael Ventura

As they move their entire editing and information storage system to the EOS blockchain, they are developing tokenized governance alluded to earlier. While I’d love to dig deeper into how this will work, we don’t know just yet how that will look. Once we do, so will you – as this project is near and dear to the Crypto 101 family’s heart. Really anyone in cryptoland should be interested in this because it is true to the core values of what many of us believe. Free and open access with free and open contribution; blockchain for a better world.

Save us from the tabbit hole

The tabbit hole is the endless string of new tabs opened when learning about a new topic. The ones that help with the jargon and background necessary to feel conversational about something. On Everipedia, simple pop-outs on each hyperlink, when scrolled over, give a brief overview of the referenced item, providing a better learning (and user) experience. It might seem simple, or nominal, but the curious learners among us will greatly appreciate this – to the point that using Wikipedia has instantly become an experience, and preference, of the past.

Everipedia is taking the wide world of information by storm, garnering support from Wikipedia co-founder Dr. Larry Sanger who now serves as Chief Information Officer for Everipedia. If that’s not enough to believe in this project and change your information-gathering browsing habits, then perhaps you’re a beneficiary of Wikipedia – oh wait, you can’t be – yet another reason to love Everipedia.